Various forms of time pieces have been devised. Certain of such devices display the time in other that Roman or Arabic numbers. For example, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,757,484 special Mayan symbols are displayed on a row of panels. Hour glass designs are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,030,285. However, the traditional hours-minute type of display (a form of "analog" display) has continued to enjoy use because of such displays are adaptable to mechanically driven systems and are easily readable and comprehended by end-users.
In U.S. Pat. No. 3,841,526 there is suggested employing four binary coded indicators for hours, four binary coded indicators for 5 minutes increments and four indicators for one minute intervals. However, here again, the end-user has to translate a binary coder indication to hours and 5 minute intervals and this complicates the problem of comprehension, especially where the end-user is a small child since binary notation (versus decimal notation) translation is difficult to comprehend. Another technical problem in the practical realization of such a display is that there are many display elements required to provide the representation of hours and minutes. This large number presents assembly, reliability and power consumption problems to the manufacturer. In addition, the resulting clock is also costly to produce.